Is he online? Another method to check...

[bronz]

Since launching attacks when a player sleeps is very advantageous, we often want to know if our opponents are awake or asleep. There are several different methods of getting this information, and naturally you should use many methods in combination and really study up on your opponents. Here is one that I use and have not seen posted yet.

Scout the barbs next to your target. Barbs regen their resources at a predetermined rate, which means if I scout a barb you farmed within the last 8 hours, I can determine exactly when your attack landed. By scouting several barbs around your opponent and knowing the distance between your opponent and the barb, you can do a little math and determine if the barbs were actually farmed by this opponent. This is a little complex to explain and I will do so after discussing barb regen.

Barbs regen both troops and resources. Troops are fully regenerated in one hour, and resources in a little over 8 hours. The regeneration occurs in ‘tics’ of 6 server mins. A lvl 5 barb regenerates 36k food each 6 min tick. Therefore if I scout a lvl 5 barb and it shows as having 252k food, I simply divide 252,000/36,000 and get 7 ticks… it was farmed exactly 42 mins ago.

In a real world example I just scouted a lvl 5 barb that is one mile away from an opponent. It shows as having 2484000 food, it’s almost fully regened. I know that it was farmed 69 ticks ago and thus that was 414 mins ago or 6 hours and 54 mins ago, and the attack was launched 6 hours and 48mins ago. (since it takes ballista+transport 6m40s to go a mile with lvl 10 HBR).

So… sounds like some complex math eh? Well fortunately the process can be reduced to the following process: Drop the three zeros off the food number, and divide by 360. That will tell you how many hours ago the barb was farmed. For example: 2484000 becomes 2484/360=6.9 hours ago. 6.9 hours = 9h 54m

Now, armed with the simple 360 rule we can scout a barb and determine exactly when it was farmed… but how do we determine who farmed it? Well, let’s look at how we actually farm barbs. For the most part barbs are farmed in groups by sending out multiple attacks from a single city. So now, a simple example would be an opponent has a barb 3 tiles north of him and 3 tiles west of him, both barbs have the same level of food. We know this guy farmed these barbs. Why? Because if they were farmed from any other location, the time it takes the attackers to get there would be different, and thus the time they would each land would be different and thus the food would be different. Now let’s get a little more complex.

With level 10 HBR, ballista and transport combo’s take 6m40s to cover a mile while attacking. Therefore if you determine the distance from barb to opponent, and multiply by 6m40s, you get the travel time it will take from launch to attack. I find it best to scout the barbs within a few tiles of the opponent and in different directions. Lets look at some data:

Distance barb-opponent Food in barb Attack landed time

2.2 miles 612,000 1.7 hrs ago
1.4 miles 576,000 1.6 hrs ago
3.6 miles 684,000 1.9 hrs ago

Now, you know how to get all this information. You scout the barb to determine its food (duah). You go from food in barb to attack landed by dividing by 360, and you simply measure the tiles to determine the distance from barb to opponent. Now, were these launched from the same city? You betcha. In fact they were all launched at the same time from the opponent’s city exactly 1h 30m ago.

Fortunately, the one mile =6m40s rule rounds off to about 6m (or one tick) which winds up being actually quite nice mathematically.

Now, you can determine when and from where your opponent sent out his farming attacks… so what? Well for one thing you have to be online to send attacks. For another, attacks tend to be in the first few housekeeping tasks a player does when he logs on. Therefore, if I know when you attacked, I can have a good guess as to when you logged on. Also, keep in mind that your opponent has no idea he is giving up this information. If you scout me, I’m on alert. If you scout my barbs, I have no idea you are looking in my direction and you know for a fact when I was logged on. You also know some of what is in each city (at least 500 ballista and 500 transports per barb farmed, and a rally point of at least the number of barbs farmed by that city). Additionally, once you know your opponent's habits, you can pre-farm his barbs. This involves launching attacks so that they land some time before his attacks land. So say I get off work at 5 every day and come home and farm barbs. You, knowing this land attacks on my barbs (using camp time) right at 4:45. My troops will be starving pretty soon and I won’t know who’s responsible (once camp time enters the mix, I can no longer tell who farmed the barbs, just that the food is gone and when it left).

Hope this helps someone, I know it helps me.

Bronz

[Senpai]

"barb farming attacks tend to be in the first few housekeeping tasks a player does when he logs on". You could not be farther from the truth. That's the last thing I do before I log off. Do not assume you know your enemy just because you know something about your enemy, or your enemy will take your life in the night while you sleep.

Good point about the food-stealing tho. I like this tactic. A lot. Supply lines == 0? Troops == Refuge.

[firmbiscuit]

Wow, thats really confusing...but once you understand it...it seems so obivious. Thanks for this strategy, I probably won't find myself using it too much, or atleast not until i start attacking bigger players with 13kAT's 100k+ archers etc...

Thanks for explaining this great idea.

+ Rep, if that matters to you.

[Zerokills]

Ah.. nice logic. But how will you know who exactly attacked the barb? Also what was used in the attack, clearly archers move faster than balistae.

[Dinoxer]

Anything may happen. So its not really 100% work but better than nothing.
There IS 1 WAY to find out if a player with no-alliance is online.
Just make sure you are an officer, and invite him via "options", they do state "player online" status there!
But only works if u are an officer++ in ur alliance and that person has no alliance.

[Cataphract]

this is kinda good, why don't you guys just send the person a message, isn't that more effective?

[``Brad]

I farm barbs when i first get online. After server update and then again before i go to sleep. So if the barbs have 0 resources i could be online and if they have full resources i could be online. Just because the barb is near their city doesn't mean that they are the 1 that farms it. A rather useless technique.

[bronz]

I farm barbs when i first get online. After server update and then again before i go to sleep. So if the barbs have 0 resources i could be online and if they have full resources i could be online.

The implication here is that because you farm in a particular way, no one can get info about you from scouting your barbs. However if someone did scout them they would know those exact three points in time (log on, server update and log off) It doesn’t take a genius to figure which one is server update, so an opponent would know when you logged on and when you logged off. They might not know which is which the first time, but they could figure it out through other methods. And regardless, an opponent could prefarm your barbs easily.

Just because the barb is near their city doesn't mean that they are the 1 that farms it.

Well, yeah that’s true. That’s also why you use the method I described to trace the attacks of three barbs back to the city (adding appropriate travel time). When you do that, and they all match, it actually does mean exactly what you said it doesn’t mean… that the attacks did come from your target. It’s called triangulation and its how your GPS works to show your exact location on earth. Again to reiterate, if you determine that three barbs were attacked such that the launch time would be the exact same time if sent from a particular city, then they were sent from that city.

A rather useless technique.

Well it’s not for everyone, that for sure. It takes some time, some math and it’s only useful vs. a player of significant power. I’m just not willing to call it “useless” to be able to negate the food a person farms from barbs, let alone determine when they were farmed and from where. But I suppose if you can’t get it to work for you then yes, it would be useless in that case.

[Mongo]

Well, yeah that’s true. That’s also why you use the method I described to trace the attacks of three barbs back to the city (adding appropriate travel time). When you do that, and they all match, it actually does mean exactly what you said it doesn’t mean… that the attacks did come from your target. It’s called triangulation and its how your GPS works to show your exact location on earth. Again to reiterate, if you determine that three barbs were attacked such that the launch time would be the exact same time if sent from a particular city, then they were sent from that city.

First off I think this method is a valid way to give you a good idea whether a person is online, but just that. Your triangulation theory is flat out wrong. Of course it could be right sometimes, but you would never know. Three player city's could farm three different barb city's at exactly the same time, even immediately after server maintenance. If these 3 barb cities were equidistant from one city of a player who wasn't online then you would assume he was. The opposite could be true if maybe the guy has 2 billion food and is sick of farming NPC's. It is a good indicator, but not some infallible system and you are making assumptions as to the origin of the attack.

[nbforrest]

blah, I play games for fun, and triangulating the square root of the distance to a city times the server reset barbarian regen cross referenced with the exact time of high tide during a full moon in guam, is just too damn much like work. It`s just a game.